Despite the limited number of objects present, the collection offers a very representative sample of the type of pieces that European societies sought for on the African continent in the 20th century; very similar objects are found in museums and private collections in Catalonia and in Spain as a whole. The Sabater Pi Collection also includes books and articles published by Dr. Sabater Pi, as well as his private library.
But the most important thing about the Sabater Pi Collection is that it has the donor’s entire archive, it preserves: correspondence sent and received, field notebooks, photographs and drawings, amongst others. The University of Barcelona has often used Sabter Pi’s life drawings to explain his life.
Thanks to this huge collection of documents, we can find out how the whole process of collecting pieces, animals, and skeletons was carried out. The archive also shows which Guineans worked with Sabater Pi, who commissioned work from him, how much was paid for the pieces, what criteria were used to find the objects, which scientists collaborated with him, how he connected with the collectors, and other information. His archive allows us to delve into the colonial world and its relationship with ethnography, museology, hunting, the collecting of exotic objects, etc.
The Sabater Pi Collection enables us to make a detailed reconstruction of the colonial universe, because it allows us to document the relationship of the collector of pieces with the different social actors in his environment: with Franco’s colonial administrators, with the Bagyeli (pygmy) hunters, with the Fang of the Nkumadjap region, with European collectors, with American universities, with Catalan institutions, with the autonomous authorities of Equatorial Guinea, with Franco’s regime, with the Spanish Monarchy, etc.
Many Catalan museums have hardly any documentation on the pieces they exhibit or hold in their collections. Here we find an opposite case, as more information is made available to us: not only are there some objects, but also the intrahistory of their acquisition (as well as that of many other objects that ended up in the Ethnological Museum, in the Igualada Leather Museum, or in private collections). You have to have the patience to reconstruct it, but the Sabater Pi Collection has the necessary tools to reconstruct his history. It just needs to be properly contextualized in the colonial climate in which he lived and which made his activities possible.